Governance and policy limitations for sustainable urban land planning. The case of Mexico.

In the last 25 years, unplanned and dispersed urban development has become the norm rather than the exception mostly in medium and small cities of the global south, a region with high poverty rates and weak institutions in charge of land use changes. This paper is based on environmental discourses and governance policy integration to address the limitations in preventing the conversion of open land, which provides ecosystem services, into settlement land. It analyzes the case of the Metropolitan Zone of Queretaro in central Mexico, which has experienced particularly high rates of urban expansion in recent years.

Navigating challenges and opportunities of land degradation and sustainable livelihood development in dryland social-ecological systems: a case study from Mexico.

Drylands are one of the most diverse yet highly vulnerable social-ecological systems on Earth. Water scarcity has contributed to high levels of heterogeneity, variability and unpredictability, which together have shaped the long coadaptative process of coupling humans and nature. Land degradation and desertification in drylands are some of the largest and most far-reaching global environmental and social change problems, and thus are a daunting challenge for science and society.